When the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age,
about 25,000 B.C., Indians and Eskimos (Inuit) gradually made their way across
the land bridge that once connected Asia and North America (where the Bering Strait
now separates the Soviet Union from Alaska).
Europeans did not voyage to the North American continent
until the 11th century A.D. About the year 1000 the Viking, Leif Ericson, came
across the Atlantic Ocean and probably landed at L' Anse aux Meadows in what is
now northern Newfoundland. Another 500 years passed before any permanent
European settlements were made in Canada.
In 1497, Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), an Italian explorer,
set out in an English ship, the Matthew, to find a western route to Asia.
Instead he discovered a "New Found Land," teeming with fish. Cabot
had stumbled on the great cod fisheries of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.
Throughout the 1500's, fishermen from England, France,
Spain, and Portugal ventured in ever-growing numbers to fish in Newfoundland's waters.
The French and English set up permanent bases on shore. They salted and dried
the cod so it would not spoil on the voyage to Europe. French fishing stations
spread out toward the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The English tended to remain in
eastern Newfoundland. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an English explorer, formally
claimed that territory for England in 1583.
Trading with the local Indians developed at the fishing
stations. In exchange for pots, axes, knives, and other implements, the natives
offered various furs, particularly beaver pelts. Soon shiploads of beaver skins
were bound for Europe. As the fur trade developed in the New World, it spread
westward, eventually reaching both the Arctic and the Pacific coasts.
(Grolier
New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia)